


Nothing Between Them

by Morbane



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Aliens Make Them Do It, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Dragons, First Meetings, M/M, Psychic Bond, Slow Build, book: Red Star Rising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:32:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How P'tero comes by the habit of catching M'leng's attention with recklessness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Between Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



> Choose-not-to-warn is for sexual mores that follow canon norms (implications of dubcon and underage).  
> Thanks are due to voksen and to an anonymous stranger for help with ideas along the way.

Only one more bend in the tunnel, and then Maethleng would be at the level of his father’s weyr. Maethleng paused, adjusted his load of planks, flipped the lid of the wall-mounted glowbasket that would illuminate the way ahead, and braced his burden again with both hands as he trudged up the slope.

He dropped his armful of wood by Gorianth’s empty sleeping platform just as a dragon's bugle echoed in through the cave mouth. Perhaps that was the watch-dragon, and the sound signalled the departure of the last Igen visitor, with a load of cured hides in trade for the timber he’d brought; if so, that meant Maethleng was surely done with lugging the timber allotted to personal weyrs around Telgar’s narrow passages. Stretching out his stiffness, Maethleng walked to the weyr entrance and peered out at Telgar’s bowl.

No, S'fert's brown Azmuth still crouched by the entrance to the lower caverns, although the rider himself was nowhere in sight. Beside him, a more familiar dragon - F'dys's blue - must just have landed, because F'dys was helping a passenger down from his dragon’s neck. He must be back from Search. Meranath's eggs hardened on the Sands again.

Maethleng grunted in disappointment and headed back down to the Weyr bowl.

Every shortcut became available to you once you were a dragonrider: silent channels of communication that allowed you to know who came and went; paths through the air from the cliff face to the ground. The tunnels, on the other hand, were the domain of children and the dragonless, so, even now that he was nearly at the level of the lower caverns, Maethleng was surprised to hear voices booming ahead of him.

"It's only sense, boy, that you're back in the Weyrs, if your great-grandmother rode a queen." That was O’ney, rider of bronze Queth.

"At Benden," agreed a younger voice, adding, "and my grandmother rides green Umioth."

"Even better!" Maethleng could imagine O’ney's wide smile. The man was affable - and longwinded. "That's a precedent you can live up to. It wouldn’t be past belief if you had a green of your very own within the sevenday."

They rounded the corner. The newly-searched candidate - older than Maethleng would have expected - was walking between O’ney and J'dar, and slightly ahead of his guides, so that it was Maethleng's eyes that he caught when he said brightly, "Oh, I don't know, sir - perhaps it'll be a blue. Surenth, he Searched me - he's a handsome beast. He made quite the Impression on me."

Maethleng choked. The boy's eyes went wide, and he glanced furtively sideways, alarmed to see that his joke had misfired. O’ney’s mouth hung open. J'dar ducked his head to hide a smile.

"Maethleng," his father said. "F’dys found a new candidate for Meranath’s clutch at Keroon Hold. This is-"

 _Trouble_ , Maethleng silently finished.

"-Petrellos."

* * *

All of the timber had been ferried to where it would be used, which meant that the weyrlings and many riders were seconded to work through the afternoon on carpentry, with Telgar's brisk joat, Senjy. Rough planks must be sanded and cut to order, and, under Senjy's very strict supervision, nailed into frames. Within an hour, Petrellos joined the other workers. He was more subdued now, or, at least, his cheek caused no incidents that Maethleng observed.

J'dar pulled rank halfway through the afternoon, claiming Maethleng’s time to help him build his new door; by then, all of the barracks’ foundation posts were in place, and parts of the frame were laid out on the ground, ready for raising up. Like the bones of a dragon’s wing - the skin would be laid upon them soon, but the structure would always be visible.

The new weyrling barracks had been planned out for months - since Meranath's last flight - and several other Weyrs had been willing to contribute the wood portion of their tithes. The only sticking point had been the Fort and High Reaches Weyrleaders, who, uncomfortable with the use of wood for outbuildings, had dithered and delayed until B'ner and Zulaya, the leaders of Telgar, had been able to guarantee that stone roofing materials would be also be on hand from the beginning of construction.

"Ridiculous," J'dar had said frankly, as the debate went on at higher levels, and the marking cords fluttered forlornly, day after day, on the cleared ground. J'dar rarely held his tongue around Maethleng, and nor did his father's friends when they were chatting in front of the youth. "You'd think Thread was four months away, not four years."

"You don't think," Maethleng had said, "they're jealous? Meranath has had such large clutches..." Miginth and Meranath were becoming known across Pern for the clutches of forty or more that Meranath often laid; this was why expanded housing was necessary.

"No," said J'dar, with as much confidence as he'd had scorn before. "Sarai and S'nan aren't of that type. And in any case, they've enough junior queens under Lanath's wing to match our production, all in all."

Maethleng's mother Amathia - not such a junior queen rider, really, though she'd hold that status until Sarai's retirement at the very least - had transferred to Fort for training when Maethleng was quite young. J'dar had elected to stay behind. He made neither a small nor a great thing of the fact that his son had been the reason for this choice.

J'dar could choose to stay at Telgar with his son; but now, whether Maethleng remained at Telgar was up to the choice of a dragon.

The unusual fecundity among Pern's dragons that everyone said was due to Thread's approach meant that Maethleng had stood to, and been stood up at, eight Hatchings already in the last six years. The Interval was dwindling away, and its remainder seemed even shorter when he reflected that before Thread fell, he would have either Impressed a dragon, or grown too old to be presented on the Sands. The same prestige that attached to him - child of a bronze and a gold rider - became a liability when he considered his other prospects. Many riders traced their descent proudly from Faranth's first band, but where such genealogy was something to boast of, few liked to acknowledge that Maethleng _could_ fail to impress. Few of the weyrfolk, beyond J’dar himself, were willing to advise him; J’dar, who had been searched from a vintner’s apprenticeship to impress Gorianth, claimed that that left him with less to prove.

“Move over, you great lout,” Maethleng muttered now at Gorianth. The dragon’s head was blocking out the light again; ever curious, he peered down at the measurements Maethleng was marking on the door timbers.

J’dar coughed.

Maethleng scowled. The touch of heat in his tone when addressing Gorianth was out of line; he felt resentful, even knowing he’d mis-spoken.

J’dar merely looked at Maethleng in silence for several beats.

“You know Gorianth is fond of you,” his father said at last.

Maethleng was unwilling to protest that in front of the dragon himself. Gorianth had never spoken to him. He knew that it would have been unusual; Gorianth had never spoken to Amathia either, or Allie, Maethleng’s foster mother. 

“Sorry, Gorianth,” he murmured at last, reaching up to a familiar spot under the bronze’s jaw where he liked to be scratched.

“You’re tired,” J’dar acknowledged, relaxing as his dragon relaxed. “I remember you were tireless enough when it came to carving out your own quarters... I’ll tell you what, you may get wood for your own weyr by Threadfall. I’d lay bets many foresters will be felling and selling half their acreage before the Pass.”

“Or they’ll be insisting that Weyrs ought to have the fighting strength to protect every click of expansion,” Maethleng retorted.

“Hm,” said J’dar, unruffled. “Worry-wherry.”

A few minutes later, his father tried a third tack. “You met Petrellos today.”

“Yes,” Maethleng frowned. “Why was O’ney with him, anyway? Who needs two bronze riders as escort to find the candidates’ weyrs? He didn’t seem so young.”

“O’ney saw potential,” J’dar said. “You heard that part? His great-grandmother and his grandmother both rode dragons.”

Maethleng, finally focusing, put this together. “And his father went back to serve in a Hold?”

“Mother, actually,” J’dar said. 

That put things in perspective. Weyrfolk disagreed about whether as many girls as boys should ride green; but if women were available, the dragons usually chose them. If a weyrbred woman chose to leave a Weyr, then surely, first, she’d tried to impress. Just as he had.

“Now it dawns,” J’dar said. “Maybe you should have a talk before you’re both on the Sands.”

Maethleng nodded. He appreciated the nudge, but it was a nudge away from the Weyr. Did it mean J’dar had lost hope he’d Impress? If he wanted anything more from his father than J’dar already gave him, it was direction; the same steady, reserved quality that saw J’dar respected by the Weyrleader and others also manifested in an unwillingness to pass judgement. Maethleng never knew what his father was thinking.

* * *

In the Lower Caverns, Allie set Maethleng to drying dishes before he’d even reached the bread laid out on the serving table. “The next batch of soup’s not ready yet anyway,” she half-apologised. “Senjy dismissed all the folk working outside not so long ago...” Maethleng saw the result. Fifty hungry workers descending on the kitchens early had made a mountain of bowls, forks, and spoons at the common sinks.

Maethleng picked up a drying rag. “That doesn’t usually throw you,” he pointed out. 

Allie feinted at his ear with her own rag. “New buildings and Hatchings are quite enough to deal with, thank you,” she said. “Hatchings! A feast to prepare, but who knows when. Youths who scrub pots obediently for me one day start to strut and tell me all about how they’ll be a dragonrider within the sevenday, no more of these kitchen chores, and I start to be glad to see the back of them.”

“I don’t do that,” Maethleng said reproachfully, wincing at the number of chances he’d had.

“Maybe you should,” a low voice suggested.

Maethleng glanced up to find the new candidate crowding him, peering around him into the rest of the kitchen. Petrellos was bulkier than Maethleng, wide-shouldered, but Maethleng knew how to stand and move like a rider, projecting a presence larger than he had alone. He leaned into Petrellos, in _his_ space now, and Petrellos rocked slightly back in response.

“I mean,” Petrellos continued, undismayed, “getting banished from chores doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Getting banished from the kitchen, however, is rather short-sighted,” said Allie. “Which you should be - shame on you, coming in so scruffy. Maethleng, who’s your new friend?”

The boy’s face fell suddenly, and he stared at his hands as though he hadn’t realised how smeared they were.

“Petrellos,” Maethleng answered, without comment.

Petrellos looked up at him, startled and pleased. 

“And I’m Allie,” Allie said, “and I’m telling you to go find the bathing rooms before you come back here for supper. They probably haven’t even shown you where they are yet - am I right?”

“No, ma’am,” said Petrellos.

Allie jerked her chin at Maethleng. “Off you both go, then,” she said.

* * *

“Did your dragon tell you my name?” Petrellos asked, a step behind Maethleng in the narrowest bend of the passage.

“I haven’t got a dragon,” said Maethleng. “ _Maeth_ -leng, didn’t you hear?”

“She was talking fast. It could have been M’thleng,” said Petrellos, managing this awful blend of consonants deftly. “But thanks for repeating it... You’re another candidate?”

“Yes,” said Maethleng, letting go of the brief measure in which someone had looked at him and seen a dragonrider.

“How far are the bathing rooms, anyway?” Petrellos asked, after a moment.

“Here,” Maethleng said. He’d taken them to the smaller, secondary set of public pools, which were probably the ones the candidates were meant to use anyway. These were used less frequently, because they were often lukewarm - except when they received the benefit of excess heat channelled to the nearby Hatching Sands, a fact many weyrfolk forgot. He ducked through the entrance and went to get Petrellos sweetsand and a towel. A handful of other weyrfolk were at the pool.

Petrellos made no move to undress. “What did you expect?” Maethleng asked.

“Stalls. Hearths. And buckets,” Petrellos said, half-laughing. He gave Maethleng a nervous look as if to check that he hadn’t been judged a hopeless rustic, his face smoothing over when Maethleng merely shrugged at him.

“It’s warm, you’ll like it,” said Maethleng, handing over the towel, shucking his tunic and trousers, and wading in with a handful of sweetsand.

No sound of movement from behind. He turned to see Petrellos staring at him.

Maethleng felt exasperated, then realised that here was an opening. “Unless you rank high enough to have a weyr with a private pool, everyone bathes like this,” he said. “Don’t you come from Weyr breeding?”

“Stalls and _buckets_ ,” Petrellos repeated in a mutter. 

Maethleng decided to let him think about it. He ducked down to soak his head and shoulders, then began to scrub himself off. 

It was several more beats before Petrellos splashed in to join him; out of courtesy, Maethleng turned away. His companion hopped out of the water the moment he did, grabbing at a towel with a speed disproportionate to the warm air in the cavern.

Maethleng was disconcerted. It seemed that his reference to Petrellos’s family history had come off more as a jibe than he would have wanted. He attempted to reassure the other lad. “No one thinks anything of stripping down to bathe,” he said. “Especially the riders. No one comes here to stare."

“Sorry,” said Petrellos, really going red now, and Maethleng recalled how the other boy had gaped at him.

“I don’t mind,” he said, managing not to laugh, but unable to keep his face entirely straight.

“Oh,” said Petrellos, looking _really_ strange; but then, following Maethleng out of the cavern, he scraped his head on the roof and let out an indignant yelp.

“Sorry,” Maethleng said, as Petrellos shrugged it off, and Maethleng turned away from his scowl. “I forget where everyone needs to duck around here.”

“I thought you were taller than me,” Petrellos blurted, behind him.

Maethleng wasn’t sure what to say to that.

He was glad to lose Petrellos again at the lower caverns. T'dam, the Weyrlingmaster, motioned the two boys over from the entrance. "Ah, Petrellos, welcome," he said. "Maethleng, I'm glad you've been showing Petrellos around. Petrellos, has Senjy given you any assignments tomorrow?" - with an ominous tone that, Maethleng guessed, had nothing to do with Petrellos. T’dam would be furious at the joat for co-opting a new candidate for labour before T’dam had managed to drill the rudiments of dragon care into him. Maethleng slipped off before he got mixed up in the quarrel.

He wasn’t surprised when Petrellos didn’t show up to the barracks project the following day.

* * *

But he was surprised when he saw Petrellos at supper that evening; not because Petrellos was there, but because, upon catching his eye, Petrellos’s face (scrubbed clean this time) broke into a brilliant smile. Maethleng was uncomfortably flattered.

“Is that your new pet, Maethleng?” asked Yevet. Yevet, who had been Searched for the last queen egg, had elected to stay and jockey for a green; a pragmatic choice, but her general attitude was cynical. She’d barely warmed to him, taking his advice and comments about Telgar riders eagerly enough but making it clear that she wasn’t interested in any further alliance unless he Impressed. “No,” he said shortly. He wasn’t sure why he chose to fence with her; or why even the force of habit had caused him to choose her table tonight.

Petrellos set his mug and bowl down beside Maethleng’s, and Maethleng gave him a brief smile; here, after all, the smile was more likely to be returned.

Petrellos swung his legs over the bench. “Let me guess,” Maethleng said. “You’ve been drilling in weyr ranks and addresses.”

“Not manners, anatomy,” Petrellos said. “Wing joints, all of the other major joints. I think T’dam is afraid the worst of us will Impress tomorrow, and what we say to the Weyrleader will be the least of his worries.”

Maethleng considered the whirlwind Petrellos must have been drawn into since arriving a bare day ago. “Have you even seen the clutch yet?”

“No,” said Petrellos.

“I’ll take you, later,” Maethleng said, scooping up a spoonful of tubers, and soaking up the delight in the look Petrellos gave him.

That _later_ allowed him to tease out some of Petrellos’s family details. His family were weavers with a sizeable herd of woolbeasts, in a minor settlement to the northeast of the main Keroon hold. He was on familiar terms with his grandmother, Emilie, who visited as her health permitted; she was nearing her seventieth year. His great-grandmother Patricia had ridden gold Sabrith at Igen, and his grandmother's brother T'ris had also ridden a green. But for all of Maethleng's coaxing, all he could learn about Petrellos's mother was that her name was Palina, she was stubborn to the bone, and after standing to two Hatchings, she had made a bond with another failed candidate from outside the Weyr, and they had set up an under-hold with his inheritance.

"Of course she hadn't any land of her own," said Petrellos, "but she always said that by the time their steading got too crowded, one of us would be old enough to claim land for the family. Grandchildren's claim and all that. How many generations are you in the Weyr?"

"My father was Searched," Maethleng said, conceding details for details. “ _His_ father’s still in the wine trade with Hegmon. Lengley. I’m named for him, and for my mother - she rides gold Yerebrenth,” and he let that ring out. Yerebrenth’s name was good for that.

Petrellos got up to refill his mug. Yevet finished her meal and left the hall without another look at Maethleng. She was a strong prospect, searched by Z’ran’s Belroth, many of whose choices Impressed. She might well be a dragonrider in a few days. So might he, of course, but somehow it wasn’t the same. 

He hadn’t actually gone to look at Meranath’s latest clutch; he would see it now for the first time. “Come on, then,” he said to Petrellos, amused at how Petrellos dragged his fork’s points around an empty plate; it would have been annoying, except for how distant Petrellos’s gaze was, with the dragons already. Petrellos blinked - he had long eyelashes, only visible at this close distance, as sandy and fine as his hair - and returned to the moment.

* * *

It was hot in the tunnel that led to the Hatching Sands, unusually so.

A scream echoed through the tunnel towards them; a dragon scream; Maethleng identified it as a queen’s scream. From the direction, it was clearly Meranath’s. The two boys glanced at each other, and dashed to the tunnel’s end.

All the way across the Sands, Maethleng saw the Weyr’s senior queen flailing. She whipped her head back and forth, and rocked on her forelegs, distraught but careful of her eggs. Now that they’d emerged onto the Sands, he realised, too, that the heat had nothing to do with his physical senses; it curled into his chest, rippled through his abdomen, weakened his legs. This was the broadcast of a rising queen. Maethleng reckoned the months. Nichelth had clutched too recently. It must be Argalth blooding her kill.

Shouts echoed across the Weyr bowl. Nichelth’s rider, Kitrine, would be taking her dragon far away, while Atupeth, the most recent queen to crack egg, was too immature to be in danger or to pose a threat. The bronzes would be gathering; the other weyrfolk would be clearing well out of the way.

Meranath screamed again, her wings half-unfurling as though she meant to pull them away from the eggs she was covering and rise into the air.

“She’s not supposed to react,” Maethleng said in dawning horror. “The brooding instinct’s supposed to be stronger.”

“It’s strong, though, isn’t it?” Petrellos said.

Confused, Maethleng turned towards him, and it was immediately clear what the other boy meant. Petrellos’s pupils were wide and he was swaying slightly; the rising queen must be affecting him.

“She mustn’t rise,” Maethleng said. There was no way the Weyrwoman could take Meranath away from Telgar - and the eggs - for the duration of her rival’s flight. “Steady,” he added belatedly to Petrellos.

One larger shape reflected the glows from the Sands, gliding above Meranath - one bronze, then, at least, was resisting the rising queen’s call in order to pen Meranath in. Probably Meranath’s usual mate, Miginth. But Meranath was on all fours, darting her head about as if to calculate the angle to escape him.

Petrellos shook himself. “That’s it,” Maethleng encouraged him. He couldn’t imagine anything they could do to help, but surely they could keep their heads.

“She has to protect her eggs?” Petrellos said.

“Yes -”

But he was speaking to Petrellos’s back - the other boy had darted out towards the eggs, in full view of the agitated queen. “Ware!” Petrellos yelled, waving his arms to catch her attention.

Hissing, Meranath crouched back on the sands, the sky forgotten. She leapt over a row of eggs towards Petrellos, who, with a squeak of fear, swung right to put more eggs between him and her. Meranath prowled forward, with a low, continuous rumble.

When Maethleng had been much younger, the Weyr’s resident Hall-trained teacher had described dragons from before Pern. These were vicious monsters that ate humans and were vanquished as tests of courage and virtue. Maethleng had always thought that the difference between such legends and reality was unbridgeable, until now. His fear _for_ Meranath was nothing to his new fear _of_ Meranath, a calculated creature twenty times his size, stalking about the Sands, her eyes whirling and ruddy and brighter than the glows could account for.

The lights at the opposite entrance flickered, and Maethleng realised that someone had dashed past them when Meranath’s rider called her name across the Sands. Meranath keened in response, her head snaking low, but she turned back towards the Weyrwoman, and at that moment, Petrellos skidded to Maethleng’s side.

They stared at each other. Petrellos looked exhilarated, his eyes wide and bright and triumphant. Sweat glinted on his forehead. He was panting.

“You baited her,” Maethleng accused.

“She didn’t _know_ me,” Petrellos explained, between gasps. “An unknown... as a threat... to distract her.”

A vast rush of dragons passed over the bowl, blotting out the stars. The other queen had taken flight. Meranath moaned, but only fretfully; her rider was at her head, soothing her, and the bronze that had been circling above glided to land beside her on the Sands. The danger was past.

“You’ll catch it for this,” Maethleng said, aghast, trying for his father’s calm way of stating facts and falling far short.

Petrellos gave him a dazed look. “Yeah...”

Again, he shook himself. “They’ll mark me, coming back to the candidate quarters,” he said. “Could I stay in your weyr?”

“No,” said Maethleng automatically.

“Maethleng, please,” Petrellos said, moving closer to him. “It’s not a huge thing, is it? They might bar me from the Sands, and I helped.”

“You weren’t thinking of that, were you?”

“No,” said Petrellos. “I wasn’t.” He looked straight at Maethleng. The arrogance had dropped away.

“Fine,” said Maethleng, and turned towards his quarters - the perk of a career candidate who had had years to carve out a personal weyr.

He was very aware of Petrellos's breathing, close behind him. There was little to distract him. The Weyr was otherwise occupied. The further they got from the Sands and furious Meranath, the smaller the threat to Petrellos's candidacy seemed in Maethleng's mind. More candidates had been brought in that day. Petrellos surely wasn't the only one likely to get lost on the way to his bunk in the middle of a mating flight commotion.

There were other images that went with that thought, and he refused to feel ashamed of them. He, too, was feeling the echoes of the queen's flight - standing to eight Hatchings since he'd reached adolescence meant that he'd witnessed eight queen flights, too, in that time. The first time a queen's rising had sent a shiver down his spine, he'd felt relief along with his desire - it proved that he had well above the minimum telepathic sensitivity to be suited to a Weyr. Of course it was necessary to manage one's response - but there was a kind of pride in acknowledging it.

There was a difference between thought and action, and so Maethleng allowed his mind to acknowledge Petrellos's rapid breathing, so close behind him that it nearly ruffled Maethleng's hair; to dwell on the image of his wide blue eyes, the way his smile mixed confidence and a desire to please, and the moment his knuckles had whitened around the handle of his fork at dinner - Maethleng suppressed a snort at himself; was there really anything remarkable enough for attraction in that last image, except under dragon influence? But as well as recalling, he was imagining, and the hand gripping a fork turned into a hand gripping sheets, or skin.

Safer to fantasise about the past. For upwards of a turn, he'd had an arrangement with Traxen, another weyrbred boy - it had been too casual to call anything else. Neither had ever suggested to the other that one sort-of-encounter should lead to more; neither had said, in so many words, that a particular winter evening might be the last one they spent sharing heat, because it didn't need to be said. There was barely an _it_ to call an ending to; but it had ended, because Traxen - T'sen - had impressed Farfalth.

The wistfulness that clung to those memories was thwarting Maethleng's attempts to enjoy them now. He kept seeing Petrellos straddling him on his bed, instead of T'sen, and the way his hips, too, would jerk forward to rub his cock up against Maethleng's, all the more appealing because of how raw and awkward a movement it could be.

The part of his mind that was grounded - the part that didn't know that Argalth was still in the air, ahead of her pursuers - was glad he hadn't glanced at Petrellos in the baths the previous evening. He knew how his mind would have been playing with that image now. But if he had - and the part of him that was floating, rushing, attempted to fill in the picture, with water that rippled across skin, and answering ripples of heat in his abdomen, chest, thighs.

He reminded himself that Petrellos was attractive simply because he was there. Well, Maethleng thought, perhaps not _just_ that. He'd never been so strongly affected by a queen's rising before.

His weyr was at the end of a long downward tunnel, one of many branches, but one of few that didn't simply end in a storage niche, or a blank wall. These tunnels had been made by Telgar's first architects, who had left the completion of the possible weyrs as an option against future population levels. Telgar’s first builders hadn’t truly understood dragonriders or dragons; caves below ground would never satisfy a rider’s need to lodge close to his or her partner. Yet, though the caves were far from ideal, at the rate Meranath, Nichelth and Argalth - not to mention Atupeth - were producing, he might have company down here within the Turn of a year. He corrected himself again - there would be lodgers down here, but either he'd have impressed a Telgar dragon, and would live at lake level until his partner matured, or he might be gone from the Weyr entirely.

He hoped the cave's next occupant appreciated the work he'd put into smoothing the threshold and walls. Petrellos certainly seemed to; he looked approvingly around at the set of shelves Maethleng had built, the heavy hangings that prevented warmth from seeping away into the rock, and the large bed. His gaze lingered there.

Maethleng stepped through the doorway after him. Petrellos turned back to him. "Maethleng," the other boy said, and kissed him. Or tried to; Maethleng's hand on Petrellos's chest kept him away.

"You're sensitive," Maethleng said.

Petrellos beamed. "I am."

Maethleng shook his head. "You're acting on Argalth's influence."

"Maybe not just that," Petrellos retorted, echoing Maethleng's earlier thought. "And if I am, so what?"

Maethleng’s pride, was what.

Of course, Petrellos had only been at the Weyr a day. Maethleng tried to imagine what he could have absorbed in that time, but gave up (he was far more inclined to imagine how Petrellos's chest would feel under his fingers without an intermediate layer of cloth).

"Is this what you think things are like, in a Weyr?" Maethleng said - using words to keep sensation at bay.

Because, of rider family or not, so many did think that. "A dragon's rising, so everyone finds the nearest warm body, screws them, and goes their way the next morning?"

Petrellos made a sound of disagreement, or disappointment.

"It isn't," Maethleng said.

Petrellos swallowed. "So - so it isn't," he said, "all right. Fine. Still, so what? It's not about what _everyone_ does, it's only _some_ about what the dragons are doing out there..."

He leaned forwards, into Maethleng's hand.

Maethleng didn't react. He had one advantage: weyr breeding kept his expression smooth, even thought his trousers weren't. The conversation had done nothing to diminish his own interest, and he knew Petrellos knew it.

"Maethleng. Please," Petrellos said. "I want..." - he sidestepped into charm - “to touch you?”

"What you want doesn't... make anything between us," Maethleng said.

He was expecting Petrellos to agree, say something about keeping things casual, and then Maethleng would be firm with him, and the new candidate could just sleep on the rug. But Petrellos flashed his brightest grin yet - the assurance was dazzling - and said, "You say that, but you don't know what I'll do to you."

Maethleng pushed off from Petrellos's chest, lowering his hands, unimpressed, expecting an unwelcome slather of wet lips and clenching fingers. Petrellos grinned and slid a hand up Maethleng’s back, stroked his other hand down from Maethleng’s chin to his groin, as if describing his shape; as if an authority on that shape. He held Maethleng that way for a moment, the hand on Maethleng’s back rubbing small circles - then took his hands away. Maethleng found himself rocking forwards. He did, after all, _want_ this contact - or others - when whatever bronze it was caught Argalth.

He stepped back to the bed, sat down, and, beginning to take off his shoes, said - half laughing - "Show me."

* * *

Maethleng woke very early in the morning, cold, because Petrellos had tugged half of the weavings off him, and was tugging at him too. “Mith. _Mith_.”

“All right,” Maethleng said. It was lightless in the weyr; he fended Petrellos off, gingerly, by touch.

“You didn’t tell me where the nearest toilet rooms were,” Petrellos said, “so can you get up and show me?”

Maethleng groaned, and grimaced, and stretched out towards the ground. He pulled a tunic on. He and Petrellos shuffled together upwards, towards the Sands-side bathing pools.

Having guided Petrellos to the entrance, he made a quick detour to levels that met outside air. It was just as early as he’d thought. The stars were bright, only barely softened by oncoming morning.

Petrellos was scrubbing himself vigorously in the bathing pool when Maethleng returned. He joined him.

“Your timed your needs nicely,” Maethleng said. “You can sneak back into the barracks now, you’ll pass barely anyone; you’ll maybe even sleep more.” _Sleep_ felt, to him, then, like an opportunity no one should ever turn down.

“Oh,” Petrellos said. “Needs.”

“Kind of defeats the point, doesn’t it?” he added. “If all I wanted was to sneak back in, why, I could have just waited an hour after the flight. Right?”

“Defeats the point of -” Maethleng prompted.

“I like you as my alibi, Mith,” Petrellos said, splashing towards him. He grabbed Maethleng’s shoulders and kissed him. It wasn’t a bad kiss. “I think I’d rather crawl in, around mid-morning, blissed out...” He grinned.

Optimistic, Maethleng thought; compatibility while dragons were flying didn’t always translate to ordinary days and nights, or so the riders said. But as an experiment, it made the most sense now, while he was easy with the other boy, each of them only barely uncurled from the other’s body. He gave up on the opportunity for sleep.

“Lower your expectations,” he said wryly. “Without dragons...” there might not _be_ much between them. And really there wasn’t anything; last night had been dragons, and this, now, was framed as a game.

Petrellos made a face. “Are you saying you Weyr folk need dragons around to have fun?”

They went back to Maethleng’s weyr, hair still dripping. The cave smelt of both of them, but it made Petrellos grin. Petrellos sprawled backwards on the bed with a dramatic sigh, but when Maethleng, after a brief, wry pause, leaned over to tease Petrellos’s cock, Petrellos grabbed him and pulled him forwards instead. Petrellos tugged - “here, come on,” until Maethleng was suitably sprawled across Petrellos and his cock was in reach of Petrellos’s mouth. Petrellos curled his chin forwards to lick. Maethleng boosted him up, his hands bracing Petrellos at the back of his head and neck, giving Petrellos more access, and freeing Petrellos’s own hands to grip his hips. He was framed by Petrellos’s determined mouth - hands would have been enough, but this, after a clumsy start, was satisfying - and the tip of Petrellos’s cock brushing his buttock, and it was a good place to be in. He felt completely anchored, indescribably _present_ , _here_.

“Now,” he murmured, a bare warning before he emptied into Petrellos’s mouth. Petrellos twisted to the side, nearly tossing him off, and spat out onto the rug. “Hey,” said Maethleng.

“Not my favourite taste,” Petrellos said, but one hand was still firm on Maethleng’s hip.

“Mith,” he added, quietly, apropos of nothing, and an unnecessary prompt, because Maethleng was already sliding down Petrellos’s body to return the favour.

Maybe dragon sex should always lead to more sex, Maethleng thought foolishly, blood rushing through his limbs, vivid at least where it roared in his ears. Maybe nothing should be casual - maybe everything should always develop upwards - and even the part of him that was laughing at himself was gratified.

* * *

Maethleng had sharp hearing; it kept from losing track of everything, down in these lower caves, where the other weyr youths claimed to feel blocked in. When the sounds of Weyr bustle filtered down to the two of them, he kicked Petrellos out. 

“That’s how it is, then,” Petrellos said, dressing, pouting in the glowlight.

“Pushing won’t get you anywhere with me - lad,” Maethleng said. It was entirely a game, he thought, with this one. If he had woken up acting the besotted lover, he suspected Petrellos would now be teasing him with exaggerated distance. 

“Just out the door,” said Petrellos, still dramatic, and suited actions to words.

Maethleng dressed, and scrubbed at teeth and face with water in a small pail - even in the Weyr there was a practical fondness for hearths and buckets.

* * *

The Lower Caverns proper were in vast disorder. Maethleng looked out for Allie, and saw her at last striding out of one of the side-caves. “Don’t go in there,” she said, rolling her eyes in exaggerated dismay as he fell into step with her. “It’s full of Holder guests, and half of them are in a fuss because they were promised _bronze_ riders to bring them in for the hatching... only they got blues and greens and whoever was available, because the bronze riders this morning - well, you know.”

He did. “Holders fret about dragon ranks now?”

“Well, not so many, thankfully - but even Lord Paulin was annoyed, because he’d been promised C’lim and Spelth, and when K’tin showed up on Henmoth, and couldn’t carry Paulin _and_ Lady Rosline in one trip...” 

They’d reached the kitchens. Barely pausing, Allie grabbed a neatly folded cloth off a high shelf and dumped it in Maethleng’s hands. He began to shake it out. “Where do you need me to spread this?” he said, assuming it was a table covering. 

“On you, I rather think,” Allie said. It was a spare set of candidate’s robes. “Do you think I forget you’ll be on the Sands today?”

Maethleng shook his head, touched. He knew from many attempts exactly how long it took from the first warning hum to race back to his weyr, change, and join in the ceremony; having made an art of this, he now tried to forget about Hatchings until they were occurring. 

“If you do Impress,” Allie reminded him, “you’ll kick yourself for missing a chance at a last lazy morning.” 

"If it makes you feel better, to think someone's escaping this..." Maethleng said, casting his eye over the kitchens, which could only be described as a storm with the Headwoman, Tisha, at the eye.

He escaped to the slower-unfolding chaos of the barracks, the robe tucked under his arm.

It was still well before noon when the dragons began to hum, and he was just as glad he hadn't gone back to bed.

* * *

The candidates waited in the far tunnel, shifting from foot to foot under T'dam's watchful eye; from nervousness, now, but soon from heat. Yevet looked very calm, but Maethleng caught her grimacing at another candidate's fidgeting. That candidate was a weyrbred girl: Jule, he recalled, whose first Hatching it would be today. "Good luck," he said to her. 

"Thanks," she said, twisting the ends of her fine hair.

"To you too," Petrellos said boldly, catching his eyes from behind Jule.

The dragons' low hum filled the tunnel, growing to a physical force, as if it pressed on their bones.

Maethleng ran over the clutch in his mind. This was Meranath's sixth clutch, her fifth since Zulaya had become Weyrwoman and B'ner's Miginth had flown the queen; there was forty-three eggs this time. No queen eggs in this clutch - though Meranath had already laid one, and she was still in her prime. Nor would there be many bronzes. Meranath's last clutches had all been half green, and blue hatchlings had made up a great many of the rest. He realised that if he were thinking these things out loud, he would have a rapt audience among the younger candidates; but really, it was moot. You Impressed or you didn't.

T'dam, who had been counting heads, finished his own figuring, and waved them forwards onto the Sands. They made a loose fan in front of the eggs, close but not _too_ close to Meranath, whose eyes were whirling with an encouraging blue-green hue. 

Every Hatching - since his first - Maethleng had put on a casual air as long as he could, but standing before the eggs at last, he was riveted. The patterns on the eggs were famed for shifting, almost moving, in the beholder's eye, but he imagined that below the hypnotic streaks, he could see the life pulsing in the dragons about to emerge into the world.

Petrellos, moving up to Maethleng's side, ducked his head respectfully to Meranath, and stumbled.

"She spoke to me," he told Maethleng, shocked. "She says she doesn't like me." Meranath had lifted her head and was staring at the Keroon candidate, eyes shifting from green to amber.

"She might not remember why," said Maethleng, unnerved. Dragons did not form clear memory associations, but those they did form were strongly linked with emotion. 

"No, she doesn't," said Petrellos. "But she doesn't want me to Impress." His words ended almost on a wail - his face had gone very white. Maethleng could only imagine the pressure of the angry voice inside his head - the voice of the dragon that all the other dragons in the Weyr obeyed.

"Step back, stand a little behind the other candidates, close your mind off," he said. "If that doesn't placate her, you'll have to talk to T'dam - make some kind of exit - but maybe it’ll be enough. Think of the sand under your feet, think about what you can smell, think about breathing. Try it." 

"What if -"

Maethleng stepped in front of Petrellos, blocking Meranath’s sight of him. "Go, Petrellos."

"All right," Petrellos said, stepping back. Maethleng gave him a curt nod, and turned back to the eggs. They had begun to crack.

The first to hatch was a brown, splitting his shell almost in half so that it swung open like a hinge. Three younger boys surged towards the hatchling; Maethleng kept part of his attention on them, in case the hatchling rejected all three, while scanning the other eggs. “Pomonorth,” he heard the successful candidate say, firm and clear, and that was settled. Two eggs on opposite sides of the group rocked, each attracting groups of candidates. Maethleng saw Petrellos hanging behind the group that moved to the left.

An egg cracked right in front of him. Maethleng bit his lip, waiting for the hatchling to climb out, thrilled by the blue head-knob that showed above the edge. The dragon looked at him without recognition. Maethleng waited another beat, just on the chance the blue's eyes were not yet clear of his egg's fluids, but stepped aside neatly when the dragon, still unresponsive to him, stumbled out.

A central trio of smaller eggs were shifting. Maethleng moved towards them, skirting other eggs yet to hatch. Yevet followed him. "They probably _are_ greens," he said, acknowledging her.

"I hope so," she said. A crack appeared in the leftmost egg, and she clenched her fists, then scowled at him for noticing. "Did I just see you had a fight with your Keroon pet?" she added, the non sequitur a poor attempt at nonchalance.

"There's nothing between us," Maethleng said, irritated, and then wondered if that was true. But the egg in the middle of the three began to crack, and the leftmost one hatched.

A green - yes - sprawled out onto the sand, whining pitifully at the landing it had made for itself on bumpy shards. "Oh dear," Yevet said, reaching out to free its claws. Maethleng, also trying to catch its eye, braced himself to pull her out of the way if the dragon saw her as an obstacle, and braced also for the gesture to be misconstrued.

But - "Aunilth," said Yevet. "Aunilth, I've got you..." Like the blue, before, she looked past Maethleng as though he didn't exist. She was enraptured.

She led the little dragon off across the sands, walking slowly so that Aunilth could nudge into her legs at every second step. The green dragon keened each time contact was broken off, until it was made again.

Maethleng heard other cries around him. Mostly dragon screams; a newly-hatched dragon was pure compulsion from tail to jaw, first the life-or-death need to Impress, and then immense hunger. (Maethleng suspected that the tradition of a hatching-day feast existed not just for the purpose of celebration, but because some of that hunger diffused to the watching humans.) But he also heard emotional cries from the candidates - “Dameth!” was one, and “Tracath!” - and also “Ware!” and “See, over there!” - and gasps and cheers from the stands.

The array of humans and eggs across the Sands was thinning a little, even as the eggs’ debris spread across the ground, a hazardous passage. It wasn’t only for the heat that the candidates’ sandals were thick-soled.

A crack echoed so close behind Maethleng as to make him jump. The egg that had made it appeared whole on the side he faced, but he skirted around the egg in time to see a bronze climb out, the slick of albumen only increasing the sheen of his hide. 

This dragonet was quicker on his feet than the rest. He set off in a brisk, lumpy trot before Maethleng had had a chance to attract his attention; Maethleng followed the sturdy beast half a measure across the sands before giving up. The bronze was headed for a knot of boys that included Petrellos. Maethleng wondered for a moment what Meranath would do about that; but another boy from that cluster, Givanni, made contact first, and Maethleng saw him call out the bronze’s name.

Maethleng turned back, now with a clear view of the whole field. Thirteen eggs remained unbroken, but most showed cracks. A green dragon was lurching towards two boys brought in from Fort Weyr, one of whom, if Maethleng remembered, claimed a relation to Sorka, the First Weyrwoman. Away to the right, one blue dragonet tripped another, both wailing painfully. Zentian, H’san and Yawen’s son, headed for the upright one, at the fore, but was nearly slashed on approach. This blue’s eyes were whirling an especially vivid shade of red. Well-trained, Zentian threw himself to the side to avoid the oblivious hatchling’s claws; but the scene ended happily, with Impression between Z’tian and the second blue, now revealed as Darth. Maethleng circled the unpartnered blue hatchling warily, trying to catch his eye, but he, too, was ignored.

The egg Maethleng had turned his back on, in chasing the bronze, split open, spilling a green. As it did, the third of that little group cracked across the side, as if its occupant was determined not to be left behind, and another green fought her way out, stumbling after her sister. Maethleng ran towards the two greens, knowing that his odds were dwindling; he had to forget that, forget all _possible_ dragons, and think only of these certain ones. Jule ran level with him, clearly thinking that they could manage one green apiece.

Maethleng moved into the line of sight of the first green, who had planted her feet and was swinging her head from side to side with piercing creels. Maethleng reached out to her muzzle to line her gaze up with him; she resisted, but he held on. Be my friend, he thought. This is what you hatched for.

 _It is,_ the hatchling agreed. _I am Sith and you are my rider and you are.... happy?_

 _I am very happy,_ he told her; the words were a poor match for the wonderful sense of trust that flowed from her, her offering of complete dependence and complete support, but inadequate words didn’t matter, because everything he was feeling, she could feel. He had had so many years to anticipate this moment, and none of his vast expectations diminished it.

 _I want to eat now,_ Sith told him. _How can you bear to be so hungry?_

“I’m not hungry,” he replied. “That’s all you.”

 _Oh._ She conveyed so many things at once; curiosity at the difference between what she felt and what he felt, delight that she was learning new things, and, of course, hunger.

Jule was chasing the other green, who had turned in a clumsy circle back towards Maethleng and Sith. She caught up. She reached up to the green’s muzzle just as Maethleng had, but the dragonet reared upwards, disconcerted, slashing Jule’s side with a foreclaw. 

“Get back,” Maethleng called - she was already trying to, sprawled on the Sands but trying to get purchase to roll away - and dashed forwards. Sith, alarmed, dashed with him. Firmly, angrily, Maethleng’s dragon shoved at her clutch-mate, who dropped to the ground, crying pitifully, and lurched in a different direction.

 _Well done!_ Maethleng thought at Sith, prouder of her than he would have thought possible; amazed that he had the capacity for even greater joy.

 _You didn’t want her to be hurt,_ Sith said. _She didn’t mean to hurt her,_ she added, successfully coming to grips with yet another creature’s desires and motivations. Surely she was a prodigy.

Jule struggled upright. “I’m _fine_ ,” she said, before Maethleng could ask, her face screwed up with pain and resolve. She spotted another unattached green, weaving towards two boys, and staggered towards her, clutching her side. Maethleng wished her luck; but before he saw the outcome, Sith nudged him again, and her hunger distracted him completely.

* * *

He fed Sith, and settled her in the weyrling quarters to sleep off the novelty of her first meal. He stayed, stroking grit and sand off her hide, until T’dam chased him out to bathe and get food on his own account. Preoccupied, he went the long way round to his old weyr to get just what he needed for now: shoes, clothes, his best knives, a whistle-pipe. J’dar caught up with him when he returned to the boys’ weyrling cave. “Tell me your names,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to hear them by dragon gossip, should I?”

“Sith. And M’leng,” said M’leng. Of course it was M’leng; what else would he have chosen? But his father looked pleased to hear it spoken.

"Go by the Lower Caverns - Allie charged me to find you, and send you to her, or risk the consequences," J'dar added. M'leng looked slight askance at him. But J'dar finished with a hearty "Well done," from father to son.

Allie hugged him tightly and looked him up and down as if he could have changed appearance radically in the last few hours. "Let's hear it," she said playfully, "you're a dragonrider now, no more scrubbing pots..." 

"Well, I'll be scrubbing Sith," said M'leng.

"No more chopping tubers..."

"Mostly meat, I think," he countered.

"Never to be seen in the kitchens again..."

"Now that's just silly."

"Oh, Mith - M'thel?" Allie's eyes were bright.

"M'leng."

And then Sith woke, and he had to feed her again, and somehow evening had fallen already, and then before the sun rose the group of new riders and dragons had to negotiate the troughs a third time, feeding their dragons in the dark; M'leng didn't even know the new names of all the weyrlings within these walls, but he had already learned how Sith liked her meat in long chewy pieces, and how she liked to gnaw things - he had to take a large bone away from her, afraid she would hurt her gums. Her full teeth wouldn't come in for months.

Unbothered by the chaos of feeding, T'dam pulled M'leng aside. "You've the most experience," he said. "You'll have the responsibility of showing a bunch of them how it's done. We'll talk about that tomorrow, but for now - D'wen, L'mie, Maddy, Jamila - you come here - M'leng will watch you, he's an old hand at this. His Sith will grow up the sleekest of all, you'll see," which caused each and every new rider to stand straighter, puffed up defensively, sure that his or her beast was the best and most beautiful. T'dam laughed.

* * *

The riders of Meranath's clutch were at the lake shore to bathe their dragons for the first time when M'leng saw Petrellos again. He was startled to realise that they'd been on the Sands together only the previous day. Of course, he thought vaguely, the Weyr was a very different place before and after a Hatching; _before_ was bustle and preparation and weyrlings drilled sternly to keep their excitement from getting out of hand. _After_ meant the mature riders had to pick up slack in all the chores the new riders had abandoned for their dragons.

 _Before, you didn't have me,_ Sith said.

"That's right," M'leng told her, trying to match this conceptual leap; how could she imagine his life without her, when hers had barely existed before him?

"I called it," Petrellos said, coming up to him with a bucket of oil and a cloth waved as an offering. "Mith and Sith. You match."

"Of course we do," said M'leng fondly, amused by the superficiality of that link, and the depth it had in truth.

"Are you going to introduce us?" Petrellos asked.

"You know Sith's name already," M'leng said.

"Right," said Petrellos. He squatted on his heels to look at the dragon; M'leng was impressed that Petrellos thus put his head below her jaws, barely clean from the morning's feeding. "Hello, Sith. I'm Petrellos. I'll be helping to oil you."

 _He likes me,_ Sith observed to M'leng.

"Of course he does, bright thing," M'leng said. "She's saying you like her," he added to Petrellos.

"And how could I not," agreed Petrellos, and Sith made a smug burbling sound and pushed up against him, unconcerned that she was being deliberately charmed.

They oiled her together. It was easy to get lost in this. Sith fed back to M'leng her pleasure in the contact and her feelings of relief from the itch of her already-stretching skin. He had to keep reminding himself of where and when he was, if only to relay to Petrellos, "More under her chin, she says." 

Once or twice he looked up to see Petrellos about to speak, but Petrellos never quite did.

M'leng supposed he was being rude, by ordinary standards. But this was how it was, with new riders; he'd seen it in other pairs many, many times now, when he had been in Petrellos's position.

Petrellos's position. It finally occurred to him to ask.

"You appeased Meranath, I see," he said.

"As you said, she doesn’t remember well,” said Petrellos, shrugging. M’leng remembered his white face at the time, and filed away a thought about differences in the façades Petrellos could show.

“They're keeping me in the Weyr for Argalth's clutch," Petrellos continued. "They said that's the usual way."

"Unless one of the other Weyrs requests candidates," M'leng said automatically. 

"Yeah, that too," Petrellos said. "O'ney sure was cheerful: apparently, from failing to Impress, the only way to go is up." There was a petulant note in his voice.

"O'ney's grandson Impressed - that's T'ney over there," said M'leng levelly. "And you didn't fail. You were deliberately avoiding Impression."

"Well, at least you know that," said Petrellos.

What difference did it make? M'leng frowned at Petrellos. He knew Petrellos's low mood was the result of yesterday's excitement, and anticlimax, but he wasn't willing to support his self-pity. "I 'failed' eight times," he pointed out, "and everyone knows that."

"Um. Sorry," Petrellos said.

 _You did not Impress then, because I was not there to Impress you,_ Sith stated.

Relief that his irritation had not upset her mellowed M’leng. "You have a bad habit of thinking everything's about you, don't you?" he said fondly to Petrellos.

"Shouldn't I?" said Petrellos, brightening.

"No," said M'leng firmly, his hand resting on Sith’s shoulder.

"Ah," said Petrellos.

* * *

The rest of the candidates - and those approaching that age - were bundled together with the new riders for every lesson, and expected to answer T'dam's questions just as swiftly as those who'd Impressed. M'leng's unofficial position as T'dam's assistant was confirmed; if he'd expected his long years of living around dragons to make Sith's first few months of care easier, this made up the difference. Petrellos, to his relief, did not make trouble in "class". Nor did the prickly Yevet, or T'ney, who tended to the pompous. With many of the weyrbred students, he found a long-held distance dropping away, as though a dragonless Maethleng of nineteen years of age had never made sense to them - never fit correctly into the world - but M'leng of Sith, their sometimes instructor, _did_.

Petrellos flirted with Z'gal and T'ske. M'leng made no comment. Petrellos turned up, without fail, to help when it was Sith's time to be oiled.

"Hey," M’leng thought to say, two months after the Hatching, as they walked back with Sith from the gravelly shore. "Where do you they have you staying, anyway?"

"In the cave the new girl greenriders just moved out of," Petrellos said promptly. M'leng grinned, sympathetic. The boys' contingent from Sith's hatching had just been moved into the new freestanding barracks, completed a week prior, but not too soon; the girls and their young greens had then been moved into one of the caves the boys had vacated. In the last few years, as Telgar's - and Pern's - queens had flown more frequently and more fruitfully, the Hatchings had each prompted this kind of upwards shuffle. At least the new barracks had platforms large enough to support dragonets fully for their first six months of life - at which point, for the smaller dragons at least, the weyrlings could begin to try the air.

"I'm not using my cave," M'leng said. "No one else is interested in a space two levels underground. Do you want it?"

"No one else is interested?" repeated Petrellos drolly. "What makes you offer it to me, then?"

M'leng shrugged. "It's private," he said, thinking of Petrellos and T'ske laughing together the previous day.

They found a spot for Sith in the thin winter sun that she deemed adequate for basking, collected a mid-meal on their way past the Lower Caverns, and made a low-lit picnic of it on M'leng's cave's floor. He'd long cleaned the rug by the bed, of course, but he'd not used it since, and now Petrellos stretched out on it casually, inviting memory.

"You can have my bed." M'leng managed not to duck away from Petrellos's eyes, saying that. "And the hangings; you need them all year round here. If you don't mind me leaving some of my things in the corners, it would help, until Sith and I have a proper weyr." He reached out with a foot and kicked a leather ball out of a corner; everyone in the Weyr had uses for the scraps left over from jackets and riding harnesses, and he'd made a hobby of making balls to kick about, in the passages and around the lake, if dragons weren't about to be bothered.

He was beginning to be uncomfortable; Petrellos was quiet. M'leng had come to expect a joke at every turn.

"M'leng," said Petrellos. "What would you say if I did this?" and leaned forward, and kissed him; it was a long, slow-moving kiss, with Petrellos pressing up towards him with just enough leverage for firmness, not enough for force.

His first thought was pleasure. His second thought was to reach out to Sith, to check that she was undisturbed by the ripple that kiss had sent through him; but she was fast asleep.

"I wouldn't _say_ anything," M'leng said, and pulled Petrellos close to feel that rush again.

When they came back up to the Lower Caverns, an hour later, it was to the news that Argalth had laid her clutch.

* * *

"Does Sith think I'll impress?" Petrellos asked, out of nowhere, one windy day by the lake.

"How would she know?" M'leng said.

"You could ask her," Petrellos pressed.

"Not now," said M'leng. Sith was among those of her clutch who had begin to take short flights; he was forced to admit that she wasn't the most advanced of their class, but she was gaining confidence in gliding from a low-set weyr to the lake level, and at this very moment, she was in the air.

"Of course not _now_ ," said Petrellos, but he shut up for a moment; they watched the green's tentative wingbeats together. She was only Meranath's height above the ground when one decisive downward stroke gained her height; and up she went again with the next.

 _Yes!_ M'leng sent encouragement along their link.

Uncertain as to how to proceed from her success, Sith turned in the air and beat her way back to the cave she had launched herself from. She landed with a jolt of pain that made M'leng wince, but it could not be serious; her primary emotion was indignation.

_You are not waiting for me!_

_I couldn't know where you'd go, love,_ M'leng told her, dashing up the long way to the cave. _See, I'm coming,_ \- with Petrellos in pursuit, caught too unaware to even shout a question to his back.

Petrellos caught up. "Is she all right?" he asked anxiously.

 _See, you startled Petrellos too,_ M’leng told her, catching his breath.

 _I am not so sore,_ she admitted, the amber of her eyes whirling back to green.

" _Oh,_ " said Petrellos, wide-eyed. "I'm very glad to hear that, Sith."

"And there you go," M'leng pointed out, later, when Sith was seen to and napping. "You can't get a better sign than a dragon speaking to you of her own accord."

He had Petrellos in his bed again. (Or Petrellos's bed. He wasn't quite sure how to attribute possession here; Petrellos had declared that if he was to take the cave, and the bed, that he would prefer the cave's former occupant to be included in the bargain. M'leng, lately, found himself less inclined to roll his eyes at this; more inclined to show up in that bed, to wait for Petrellos or be welcomed there.)

"I guess not," Petrellos said. He made a face. "The first time didn't count."

"It still might not be _this_ clutch," M'leng felt obliged to warn. 

"I know that," said Petrellos, "without you saying it," and twisted away; M'leng knew that his lover would return to his usual ebullience soon enough, but the mood was spoiled for the day.

* * *

Zulaya and Japetta, Argalth's rider, conferred over the hardening clutch, and fixed the hatching date two sevendays out. Allie demanded Petrellos's assistance in the kitchen - "and if it means I get more work out of _you_ , all the better," she said wryly to M'leng. Everyone - not just the savvy kitchen crew - now knew that M'leng and Petrellos were inseparable. 

"It's like you said," Petrellos said, in their cave, "there's nothing _between_ us," and while M'leng winced to hear the old casual words repeated, his lover's hand on his arm illustrated a new development: no gap, no divide.

But there was, of course; there was Sith, who would always mean more to him than any other kind of partner could. Petrellos joked that he'd made the _first_ impression on M'leng, before she had; uncharacteristically, M'leng let that pass. Petrellos knew better. Or so M'leng hoped.

"T'dam pegs me for a green," Petrellos said, in another quiet moment. "Apparently I fit the profile." Mischief, quick reflexes, and - M'leng snorted - a high libido; it was true, he really did.

"Going by profile, my dragon should have been a brown," he countered.

"Oh, but Sith is perfect as she is," said Petrellos, fluttering his eyelashes - and even though the compliment was calculated to inspire just this reaction, M'leng kissed him as a reward.

"I still fancy a blue," Petrellos said, when they moved apart.

"What, to match your eyes?" M'leng scoffed.

"That too," Petrellos said, "but with a blue, or a brown, I could fly your Sith..." His hands twined M'leng's.

M'leng was not so sanguine; since aiming for a specific dragon colour was folly (and it was) it was even more foolish to plan a dragon's choice, in a mating flight, of a mate who hadn't yet hatched.

“I don’t know,” he tried.

“You don’t?” Petrellos invited further comment, with wide, serious eyes, but M’leng was tongue-tied; he knew it wasn’t just Petrellos’s assumptions about how he would Impress that disconcerted him.

“It’s us you’re not sure of,” Petrellos said for him.

M’leng shrugged in lieu of agreement. He was sure of _Petrellos_ ; that was the problem. He could think of nothing else to say.

Petrellos, too, went quiet, but within a sevenday he was hinting again at blues and browns.

M’leng let these quips, also, pass.

* * *

As the candidates filed out to the Sands, M'leng was bracing himself to weather Petrellos's disappointment. Just as he, now, could see through some of Petrellos's bravado to the uncertainty it covered, he suspected Petrellos knew his doubts, and he was sorry for it. He had made himself scarce this morning, claiming Allie needed him, inventing whims of Sith to keep him busy. He had kissed Petrellos before the candidates went out, and that was all.

Still, it had been a good kiss. "Are you sure a dragon dares to claim him now, after _that_?" Jule had jibed at him, in good humour. He knew that she saw Petrellos as her new toughest rival for a green. Petrellos laughed, but M'leng couldn't bear to stay, or hear his response; he made his way to the stands.

 _You are brooding,_ Sith said. _You think you should not worry. So why do you worry?_

_Humans like to worry._

_You most of all,_ she said, unusually critical. _Even Petrellos worries, and I don't like that. If I tell him not to, perhaps he will listen better than you._

Across the Sands, Petrellos looked up abruptly, staring in M'leng's direction.

 _Yes,_ and Sith radiated contentment. _I am right._

 _Of course you are,_ he agreed.

 _And when your mate is happy, you worry less too,_ she said, her mood developing towards _insufferable_ ; but he refrained from subduing her.

All about the heights, the dragons hummed, even Sith, though he could not hear her faint warble. It was hard to make out any dragon's individual part of the thrumming that washed through Sands and stands alike; but M'leng thought it was Argalth whose voice was last to die away, as the first egg cracked.

It went very fast. M'leng's nervousness for Petrellos was nothing to the adrenaline of being on the Sands; he sent Sith a wave of gratitude, for sparing him the ordeal a tenth time. And yet he would have stood again, and again, again if he could have known that it would end in her hatching. 

He pitied Petrellos's mother, suddenly; her choice was ineffable to him.

A bronze stepped out of his shell; a good omen, by popular belief, and M'leng hoped it applied to Petrellos today. But Vellad beat Petrellos to the hatchling. "Irrileth," he called, triumphant, a moment before two other hatchlings, spilling out of their shells, would have drowned him out with their creels.

The key moment was so quick that M'leng almost missed it. Petrellos stepped up to the second hatchling to emerge - a fine-boned blue - and threw his arms around his neck. 

"Oh, well done," whispered M'leng, and, on shaking legs, he went to meet his lover and his dragon coming off the sands.

Even dazed with joy, with his new partner's reality, the newly-distinguished P'tero gave M'leng a smile that was all about being proved right.

* * *

No winter had ever gone as fast for M’leng as Sith’s first, but Ormonth’s first summer went even faster for Ormonth, P’tero, Sith, and M’leng. M'leng and Sith had their own weyr now, but scant time for furnishing it; P'tero concerned himself only with Ormonth's development, and reported each step of progress as if no dragon had made it before.

"I wanted to see your first flight," P'tero confessed to M'leng, at supper one night, the first sight they'd had of each other in three days. "But I think I was asleep at the time..."

M'leng was almost glad not to have shared it with anyone. T'dam had pulled him aside seven days before he'd been expecting it and suggested that Sith and M'leng should try a glide off a ledge together. He had known he should suppress all fear, for fear - ha - of discouraging Sith; but instead of his reassurance to Sith, it had been her sense of confidence channelled to _him_ that had ensured the success of the venture. She had leapt from an overhang, and as she fell, before the first downstroke, he had laughed for the thrill, and felt it torn away by the wind.

But, "I'll be around for Ormonth's," he promised.

He wasn't willing to confess in return that P'tero's preoccupation with Ormonth was almost welcome. Absorbed in his dragon, P'tero was also absorbed into the Weyr community in subtler ways than M'leng could ever have brought about; the Headwoman, Tisha, appeared to have taken him under her wing, and now P'tero had the riders of Ormonth's clutch-mates to bond with.

The issue of Sith's first flight lay between them.

P'tero had plans, and fantasies; M'leng blamed another young rider from Argalth's last hatching, T'red, for planting the idea in his head that a rider's lover, when his dragon rose, need not be the same as the rider of his dragon's mate. P'tero, to M'leng's embarrassment, listed the dragons most likely to compete for Sith - M'leng could almost curse his lover's increased access to Weyr gossip - and suggested who might be most likely to have arranged another partner for the occasion. M'leng's first effort to quell this was dismissed; after that, M'leng avoided the issue.

He avoided it longer than he realised, until one bright autumn day, unusually snappish, he finally identified the waves of heat he was experiencing as psychic, not physical, in cause. P'tero was nowhere about; M'leng was shamefully glad. He had, at least, made it known that he wanted a light flight - Weyr slang - with an experienced rider, "if all else failed"; but he had put in place no other plans to fail, or succeed.

He didn't try to keep his mind on the ground. He was entirely with Sith, deriving direct, sexual pleasure from the herdbeast she slashed open, from the sensation of the liquid and meat that she was consuming. The mandate to blood one's kill was only strict for queens, to ensure a long flight; for greens, it was not so vital, especially when they might be chased by bronzes, who had less speed over short distances, but far greater stamina; blood or meat would not make a difference there. M'leng had no wish to inhibit Sith in any respect, and especially not in this.

Even though she ate all of her modest kill, she was up and away before he expected it. Making a belated check on his own physical surroundings, M'leng found himself in the passage outside his weyr, where riders could find him. Drawing on J'dar's restrained advice, he trusted himself to stumble inside the weyr when the time came. That was the last he felt, as M'leng, alone; from that point on, he was with his green.

Sith was still a little new to her wings; she first beat fiercely up, refusing to check for pursuers until she was well beyond the weyr. A few followers, blues and a brown, propped up her pride; then it was her delight to feel for new currents in the air, sliding up when possible, sliding down when she felt it might surprise her followers.

Cutting short one such descent, Sith began to climb again, but the blue that had been waiting above her seized her securely, forelegs clenched on her shoulders, fixing her wings open as his were fixed, and joining with her in an ecstasy that she broadcasted, undiluted, to her rider.

* * *

When M'leng stirred awake the next morning, there was another body in the bed beside him. Perversely, he kept his eyes closed; he didn't _want_ to know what rider had taken charge of their dragon-boosted satisfaction. After a long while, he managed to doze, and when he woke again the other rider was gone.

P'tero was furious.

"You told everyone what kind of flight you wanted," - and M'leng had got it, too, no rough sex, thank Faranth, to cause him stiffness later, and cause Sith guilt - "but you didn't tell me you didn't care if I was around?"

"Ormonth isn't old enough to fly Sith," M'leng said, as he'd said several times in the preceding months. P'tero hadn't been listening.

"I know that!" P'tero said, flushing. "I saw Sith rise and I reached out to Ormonth, but I wouldn't - even if I could have - but you could have still made it _me!_ "

"No," said M'leng. "Not without making it _not about Sith!_ "

P'tero's eyes widened further; M'leng had never exploded at him before.

"There's a _grain_ of truth in all this nonsense T'red's been feeding you," M'leng conceded, gripping his anger tightly. "Dragons mate dragons; their riders want sex too, but there's leeway in the details on the ground.

"But," he said, forestalling P'tero's interjection, "a dragon's flight is about the dragon; it's not some kind of no-strings sexual boost; it's not about what the riders want, and I didn't _want_ it to be about the rider, especially not for her first time."

P'tero was still wide-eyed, distressed; M'leng supposed it was hard, to take such a rebuke at the same time as such a disappointment. A tiny part of him was even flattered at the disappointment. A larger part of him was angry that P'tero had built so much into his Holder-ish romantic ideals.

P'tero had come here to be angry with him; having found no capitulation in M'leng, he was struggling to adjust.

"I hope Ormonth wins Sith's next flight," M'leng told his lover. "I really do. But Sith's first flight was about Sith, not about us, and you're a rider - you should know that." He could add crueler things; he could ask P'tero if he'd really meant to ask M'leng to favour P'tero's feelings over Sith's innocence; but he stopped, waited.

P'tero gaped at him for a long moment - and then, apparently wordless, he threw his hands up in the air, helpless, and walked away.

* * *

It wasn't a clean break. It was neither clean nor a break. P'tero took M'leng's words to heart; from all reports, he wallowed them it for a while, until Yevet, among others, turned sharper in her sympathy. M'leng was there to witness Ormonth and P'tero's first flight together, as he'd promised, and it was bright and daring, and when P'tero landed, there was more moisture in M'leng's eyes than had been whipped from P'tero's by the wind.

After that flight, after P'tero had praised Ormonth and rubbed him down, M'leng came forward to offer his praises too; the conversation started with courtesies, but there was more to catch up on that M'leng had realised, and it went long. When M'leng finally excused himself, P'tero wrapped his arms around him; after a moment, they broke away, and whatever P'tero saw in M'leng's face made him frown.

M'leng couldn't say, _Wait_. He wasn't sure what to ask P'tero to wait for.

They were friendly, after a fashion. P'tero was distant; so many of his jokes had hinted at disdain, before, but this was colder than any of those hints. It was a large Weyr - Telgar was pushing five hundred and fifty riders - so in the meantime, there were a hundred other circles, activities, and duties that P'tero and M'leng could immerse themselves in, separately.

 _Petrellos is sad,_ Sith told M'leng; but he was far more willing to seize on her intelligence, in remembering the old name, than acknowledge the significance of her using it.

 _I know,_ he said.

 _Should I tell Ormonth that you are sad too?_ she pressed.

 _No,_ he said, firmly, and then, curious, _Do you talk to Ormonth?_

 _Sometimes_ she said. _He is graceful._ \- with a doubtful tone. _I remember his rider more._

If one wasn't trying, constantly, to make space in one's life for another person, Weyr duties and weyrling training swirled in to fill the time and space, as a storm could fill the sky. M'leng saw P'tero often - too often for P'tero to ever quite leave his thoughts - but it was, also, much too easy for that contact to be casual, for plenty of things to lie in wait and pull him off in another direction if a conversation ever threatened to run too deep.

 _He misses you_ Sith repeated, annoyed with her rider. _He is bright and laughing. He is -_ and she pulled out of M'leng's mind one of his most saturated memories, of wrestling with P'tero - he was still the stronger, despite P'tero's frame, but the look on P'tero's face when he gave in - 

_He is P'tero,_ M'leng said, agreeing with her, but hollowly.

 _You are not sure of you,_ Sith said, pulling more words out from M'leng's memories. She sent a sense of impatience, and the kind of confidence only dragons could feel. _I am sure of you._

If she did speak to Ormonth, she didn't mention it to M'leng. But P'tero and Ormonth were often where they were, at meal times and at drills (more than could be accounted for by training); and finally, on the heights one day when M'leng went there to sit in an attempt at peace with himself; he saw P'tero, off at the very edge, but Ormonth was nowhere in sight.

Following a first impulse, he went to speak with P'tero; even loud footfalls drew no response. As he approached, he saw that P'tero was tense, pressed forcefully in on himself.

Then Ormonth appeared, from nowhere, into the air.

P'tero let out a vast, exhausted, relieved breath, and M'leng drew the same volume in; Sith and her clutch-mates had not yet progressed to training on travel _between_ , but every possible warning had been drilled into them about the consequences of poorly-planned transits.

He grabbed at P'tero's shoulder, a red-tinted instinct in the back of his head urging him to pick P'tero up and _shake_ him; but he only got as far as that tight grip.

"He did it!" P'tero said, oblivious. "Did you see! I can send him _between_ , and he can use my mind as a beacon, and come back to me. Can you imagine, if I fell off his back during Threadfall, he could go _between_ just a few dragonlengths down, and pick me up again!"

" _No,_ " said M'leng, awed and terrified; he looked at the space where Ormonth hovered, and imagined how _space_ , like a breath from _between_ itself, could have been all there was to see; where his friend - lover - where P'tero gabbled excitedly now, there could have been a halved, empty boy.

"That was reckless, you shouldn't have done it," he said urgently. P'tero turned, taken aback at M'leng's level of panic, and M'leng kissed him - he didn't think to do anything else - he thought of Ormonth lost _between_ , he thought of P'tero riding another dragon between and _letting go_ , anchorless, nonexistent; he thought of P'tero's bright heedlessness and he only wanted contact between them. He only wanted P'tero to be _here_.

This turned into a messy sprawl on the rocky edge. P'tero slipped sideways, and M'leng hauled him back from the lip of the heights (deft as Ormonth might be, this was a reckless place to be in its own right). Even when they were on solid ground, he refused to let go, and it dawned on him that no one was suggesting he should; when he broke away from a kiss, P'tero pulled him back, and when he moved his hand off P'tero's back to place it on the ground, for better balance, P'tero grabbed that wrist.

"Come on," M'leng said, managing to heave them both upright; they stood there, clinging, for a moment, and then M'leng yanked them in the direction of the stairway down. Somehow - M'leng had no idea how, only that he had met with no resistance - they ended up in M'leng's weyr, where P'tero could press his skin to M'leng's skin, in defiance of M'leng's own most foolish fears, in defiance of ending, in defiance of the endless, implacable, perfect distance of _between_. M'leng never wanted to let go, or to let anything, even the merest particle, come between them.


End file.
